Agreed!
I‘d say its certain that replacing IC mileage with EV will be nowhere near enough. But it is one of the lower hanging fruit (along with power generation).
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Carbon footprint and public transport
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Agreed!
I‘d say its certain that replacing IC mileage with EV will be nowhere near enough. But it is one of the lower hanging fruit (along with power generation).
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Bantamzen
Established Member
Cheers for the link. Its certainly encouraging that its being thought about, perhaps less so that most projects are only at pre/post planning stages. Hopefully these will come online sooner rather than later, although I have a niggling feeling that these things might get bogged down through application phases. I'm sure I've seen a recent story in my area where objections to one such facility was being bogged down. Time will tell I guess, but these are the vital link between green energy generation and the users.
800MWh of utility-scale energy storage capacity added in the UK during 2022
Solar Media Market Research analyst Mollie McCorkindale offers insight into the market's progress in 2022, another record-breaking year.www.energy-storage.news
An article that is 10 months old, and things have moved on since then. However one quote:
Whether that is enough at the rates we need, I don’t know.
Coal use is over 3 times solar and over two times hydroelectric at the moment. So there are extremely littler contributors.
Nuclear is pathetic, at just three times coal. We really messed up there.
Come on.
When you say ‘at the moment’ you mean ‘at 1600 on a late November afternoon’. It’s hardly surprising there’s little solar, when we are 3 weeks away from the earliest sunset of the year.
Over the course of the last year, coal has been a quarter of the output of solar, less than hydro, less than a tenth of nuclear; wind has generated 25 times more. And in 10 months time there will be no coal generation in the national grid.
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renegademaster
Member
It's dark off course it's higher than solar, coal is about 3% of current generation and spends a good chunk of the year turnt off.
I mean this week. I'm not trying to fudge the renewables stats like all the renewables evangelists do. Casually assuming that everyone will charge their cars up at night, so as to make the proportion of renewables look good during the lowest demand period of the day is unrealistic. For starters, once everyone has an EV, if they all try charging them at the same time, the pavements will melt - as the cables exceed their rated capacity. Again, there's no overall planning here.
The energy industry dinosaurs struggle to cope with a smart meter's 24 or 48 readings a day - that's if the unreliable network infrastructure they're using manages to send them at all. The chances of clever functionality where EV owners get paid to store energy in their car and re-supply it to the grid on demand coming into use are about zero.
The Smart meter rollout is a classic example of a potentially exciting project becoming an unmitigated f*** up due to being (mis)managed by people without a clue. I had the "pleasure" of attending an industry meeting about smart metering probably over a decade ago, as I was tasked with coming up with In Home Display product specifications & designs. i asked about how they would handle multi-supplier arrangements with customers, allowing dynamic switching between suppliers at different times of the day. The answer from one of the "big 6" representatives was "I think you'll find that a unit of electricity will cost the same whoever you buy it from at whatever time of day". That confirmed to me that we were doomed and what's happened since hasn't changed my view. Early smart meters are junk and will need to be replaced well before they reach their (relatively short) end of life. Funnily enough it's the battery that's the weak point in a (gas) smart meter. Sounds a familiar story......
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Ratcliffe has been used almost daily at its max available output over the last month even when we have high levels of wind generation available.
800MWh of utility-scale energy storage capacity added in the UK during 2022
Solar Media Market Research analyst Mollie McCorkindale offers insight into the market's progress in 2022, another record-breaking year.
An article that is 10 months old, and things have moved on since then. However one quote:
Whether that is enough at the rates we need, I don’t know..
Interesting thread and especially interesting that despite all the talk of a lack of storage capacity and cars being only used for one hour a day, no one has yet mentioned that if vehicle to grid takes off, suddenly cars become mobile storage devices, and you need less static storage, and cars (and other vehicles) are not useless assets sat around not doing anything for most of the day. Obviously this has all been discussed to death on other threads by the enthusiasts and sceptics but here’s some recent news on that front that Ford, Honda and BMW have joined forces to create a V2G company:
Ford, Honda, and BMW create a new vehicle-to-grid company to help EV owners save money
EV owners will get “financial benefits” from peak charing recommendations.
www.theverge.com
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Umm not sure people will want the grid determining if their car gets charged or used as a mobile battery to support the local grid so will need to be incentivised in someway through an advantageous pricing structure.Interesting thread and especially interesting that despite all the talk of a lack of storage capacity and cars being only used for one hour a day, no one has yet mentioned that if vehicle to grid takes off, suddenly cars become mobile storage devices, and you need less static storage, and cars (and other vehicles) are not useless assets sat around not doing anything for most of the day. Obviously this has all been discussed to death on other threads by the enthusiasts and sceptics but here’s some recent news on that front that Ford, Honda and BMW have joined forces to create a V2G company:
Ford, Honda, and BMW create a new vehicle-to-grid company to help EV owners save money
EV owners will get “financial benefits” from peak charing recommendations.
Did you read the link/quote?
Don‘t tell my mate who‘s already doing it then. Making a pretty penny too.
Well, you said that coal use is over three times solar and twice hydro electric ‘at the moment’.
Now that you have defined that you were referring to a week:
For the last seven days, coal has supplied 2.87% of electricity to the grid, solar 1.19%, and GB Hydro 1.50% (ie excluding the Norwegian Hydro that typically supplies around 5% of our demand). Nuclear 9.89%, and Wind 31.61%.
I certainly didn‘t assume that. My guess is that baout 2/3 will.
Although literally everyone I know with an EV does just that, with very occasional exceptions on long journeys.
And the local distribution networks will cope (with some exceptions, of course). The average EV will need charging for an hour a night, which in practice for many means once a week or so overnight. Assuming 2/3 of charging is done overnight at home, that means roughly 1 in 10 car owners will be charging (at 7kW) on any given night. If local distribution can‘t cope with that at a time of low demand*, then we really do have a problem.
*it can.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Coal can't supply anymore we only have Ratcliffe left. If you look at from a dispatchable power basis Ratcliffe has a declared nett capacity of 1.44GW and that capacity has been fully exploited on numerous occasions over last seven days. Wind has declared nett capacity of 26.9GW but over last seven days its best output has been 15GW lowest 0.5GW min so we need dispatchable capacity to fill in the gaps and currently that is really only gas now. Storage is way off being any use there is about 2.5GW installed which can deliver c3GWh of energy enough for about 6mins national use at current demand of 30GW. BESS has an impressive pipeline with much in build now and a goal of 30GW/60GWh by 2030 but that still wont be enough to deal with a wind lull.
Majority of local distribution networks were built out in 50/60's and fortunately the engineers had the foresight to massively over provide particularly as electric heating was seen as the way forward then before North Sea gas provided a more competitive alternative. So certainly for 7kw chargers shouldn't be too many issues as long as users accept the charging time will need all night. Mind you majority of cars wont need a full recharge just a top up and overtime users will adapt to the difference between ICE and EV.
I think you need to check where you are sourcing your figures from as they seem on the low side. On Saturday the average for the day was 16.58GW and on Sunday it was 15.75GW, and the peaks for those days will likely have been higher.
And we’re building a lot more of it!
Bantamzen
Established Member
I'm not going to lie but I'm confused, how exactly does he make a pretty penny? After all surely he's paying for the electricity to initially charge the battery, so is he getting more back than he pays or is there some kind of storage fee? Either way I'm not sure this is a great way to help all consumers save money on electricity, just another way to make it more expensive. And I certainly wouldn't want to have to rely on enough EVs being on the grid when demand is at it's highest.
He‘s buying it at a low price overnight, then selling back to the grid at a higher price in the day.
When done at scale this will make the average price of electricity cheaper.
Bantamzen
Established Member
Unless you are using electricity during the day, which is the peak time for use surely?
Edit: Frankly this sounds like the sort of idea that is born in a meeting room in the City, full of consultants and accountants. Great idea for making more money, maybe not so great for the poor end users. Worse still if the EVs full of cheaply topped up energy don't make it onto the grid, then the suppliers can then argue that they had to buy even more expensive energy from conventional sources because forecast supply did not meet the demand. This may all sound very cynical, but adding numerous additional steps to an already convoluted system does not seem like the best way to cut end user costs.
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bahnause
Member
Such systems have already been in use on a large scale for decades, e.g. as pumped storage power plants. How else are power plants that cannot cope with fluctuations in demand supposed to function (nuclear power...)?
Bantamzen
Established Member
Yeah but these are predictable and largely as far as I know part of the regular supply chain. Adding private EV adds an additional stage which, the cost of which will always be passed to the end user.
It works on exactly the same principle: store electricity when there is more supply than demand, and then feed it back in when there is more demand than supply. It is no different whether it is a 5kWh battery in a home system, a 50kWh system in a car battery, a 50MWh hour battery on an industrial estate, or a 30GWh system next to a Scottish mountain. What is the extra stage?
Bantamzen
Established Member
OK calling it an extra stage was probably inaccurate, however surely selling electricity then buying it back from private citizens will add cost again, especially when you see in the article above that a new company would be created to sell the electricity back from EV to grid. And it will also add extra problems in that that capacity is not assured, if EVs aren't plugged back onto the grid then the it can't depend on it. It feels more like an incentive to buy EVs, which to be fair it probably is, as well as a way to maximise profits than an actual solid solution for creating capacity that the grid can actually rely on to store green generated energy. Frankly I can't see this driving down prices for end users, quite the opposite. And it also risks becoming a distraction for governments to avoid committing to supporting the large scale projects as quickly as they should.
Just as a side thought, what impact would overnight charging and rapid day draining have on battery performance? I assume it would be faster battery drain than normal use on the road to meet any spikes in demand?
SWT_USER
Member
Probably not doing the long-term life of his car battery much good though?
edwin_m
Veteran Member
If it isn't financially viable to provide energy storage via EV batteries then power companies won't offer the option. The fact that, as @Bald Rick notes, people are doing this already suggests it would be worthwhile. A dedicated company would simply help to make it possible for a wider range of EV users who lack the knowledge or inclination to become early adopters. Making more use of EVs that are there anyway is likely to be a better idea than creating more storage schemes of other types, all of which would cost money and have some degree of environmental downside.
Any random fluctuation in availability of EVs for energy storage is likely to be negligible in the context of the very large number of EVs that are likely to be signed up to the scheme. It sounds like a much easier problem to manage than when everyone goes to boil a kettle during half time of the big match.
The rate of drain of an EV battery being used for energy storage is likely to be similar to the rate of charge, as it's going through the same set of electrical infrastructure (and we're talking about domestic slow charging here). This will be much less than what the battery sees when a driver puts their foot down.
I have said that to him! Wondering if second hand EV buyers should be looking at the battery history as much as the odometer…
Bantamzen
Established Member
I'm not so concerned about the financial viability of such a scheme for the energy companies, clearly they think there is scope for it. What concerns me is the impact on cost to the end user, the more companies in the chain, the more it will cost as each will obviously be looking to maximise their profits. Energy costs an awful lot at the moment, way more than it did even a few short years ago and most people don't seem to be reaping any benefits of increasing greener energy production. Instead energy companies seem simply to be creating new ways to keep prices up.
Maybe, but that makes a lot of assumptions. Surely it is better to have a dependable, static, and predictable source of energy storage instead of hoping people remember to plug their EVs in.
But it is still going to be more charge / discharge cycles than the EV batteries would otherwise go through, so is going to have an impact on longer term performance.
On this point, it won‘t be rapid charging / discharging. However it could result in more ‘cycles’ of use in a given timescale. Having said that, as Tesla are showing, long term battery perfromance is typically much better than expected.
I read an interesting article recently about a company looking to set up vehicle to grid systems at airport long stay car parks. The vast majority of people leaving cars there know how long they will be away for, therefore the forward battery capacity available is relatively predicatable. Could be quite an interesting business model.
It‘s better for consumers.
It will be taking electricity that would otherwise be ‘wasted’ (principally renewables available at times when there is insufficient demand to use them), and then making it available at times when demand is high and the most expensive generators are required to meet that demand. More supply available at peak times can only reduce peak prices.
The net effect will be to lower average prices. That‘s why battery systems are popping up everywhere.
Bantamzen
Established Member
It could be an interesting model, but is it really one we want to be propping up the national grid?
By default energy companies don't work for better prices for the consumers, and this would just be another way to keep prices up. Far better to have large scale static solutions, owned by the generaters that store that green stuff until the grid needs it instead of creating a market system of buying, selling, and of course taking a cut from each part. Such as system might be great for savvy EV owners (for now at least), shareholders and investors, not so good for end users. Again, sorry if all this seems cynical, but I'm old enough to have seen how energy companies have operated ever since privatisation.
Degradation of EV batteries is much less than folk assume/believe especially with good thermal management (see here https://www.geotab.com/uk/blog/ev-battery-health/ for further details).
But buying, selling and taking a cut is exactly what the generators (that have storage facilities) do now.
It‘s absolutely no different if done at a local level, just smaller scale. The buying snd selling prices are determined by the market.
It will be much, much cheaper for all of us (and much better for the environment) for say, a million cars (at any one time) with 50GWh capacity able to pump out (say) 5GW across the nation but very locally (and therefore not stress the grid) than build 4 or 5 big Gas power stations needed only to cover peaks on non sunny non windy times.
Bantamzen
Established Member
I know, that's why energy costs more than perhaps it should....
I'm not suggesting building new gas generating plants, just scaling up storage to something that meets our needs all the time, not just when individual users plug it in.
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